“Criteria for Negro Art” and “The Negro Artist and Modern Art”
DuBois’ piece, “Criteria for Negro Art,” helps illuminate the unanswered questions by Bearden in “The Negro Artist and Modern Art.” Bearden’s aesthetics do not account for commercialism and his fundamental chain concering social critique (“The artist must be the medium through which humanity expresses itself” (141)) becomes stressed when talking about commercial viability. Bearden writes that the artist ought to channel humanity through his or her art, in some ways this meets DuBois’ criteria that art ought to be a communal artifact channeling the values or aspirations of that community: “Thus all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of back folk to love and enjoy” (DuBois 103). Bearden’s concept of humanity-artist-art only seems to work in a vacuum, in a world without the prejudices DuBois describes in his essay. The wonderful creative process Bearden describes: “…[T]he artist with vision, sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences, finally molds something distinctly personal,” would likely fade into obscurity because DuBois argues the audience for black artists expect a distinctly stereotypical as opposed to distinctly personal narrative.
Bearden talks at length about the relationship between the theory of art, an aesthetics, and the subsequent development of worthwhile art: “We need some standard of criticism then, not only to stimulate the artist, but also to raise the cultural level of the people. It is well known that the critical writings of men like Herder, Schlegel, Taine, and the system of marxian dialectics, were as important to the development of literature as any writer” (Bearden 140). DuBois’ work seems to reflect the public consciousness Bearden hopes an aesthetics for black art will cultivate when he writes that black artists simply hand over their work to a “white jury” (DuBois 104). The goal, unstated in Bearden’s piece, is that developing an aesthetics empowers a minority voice, which then in turn encourages the production of truly authentic art from minority artists.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
Week 13, entry one and two
Entry one
“The Harlem Intelligentsia” and “Cordelia the Crude” and “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” and the work of Archibald Motley Jr.
McKay’s chapter “The Harlem Intelligentsia” contains arguments for aesthetics and black art. McKay’s aesthetics emphasize authenticity, and that authenticity ought to be preserved, regardless the picture portrayed through the artist’s medium. McKay writes: “I think all people are interesting to write about. It depends on the writer’s ability to bring them out alive” (McKay 159). Within that statement appears some implication that links form and content. The writer’s ability is a very broad term that could encompass potentially much more besides form, but form is definitely under that very large, ambiguous umbrella.
Two selected works: “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” and “Cordelia the Crude” meet McKay’s idea of aesthetics in varying ways. The idea of form makes Nugent’s work, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” a problematic piece for McKay’s aesthetics, I think. Nugent’s short story, while vividly capturing the dead-end artist lifestyle, seemingly obfuscates the vitality of the people in the story through its form. The ellipses disjoint the narrative, presenting the readers with flashes of information that can be very difficult to piece together. While the lighter in the story undoubtedly meets McKay’s insistence that words ought to be “pictures conveying color and meaning,” the rest of the short story presents challenges to McKay’s aesthetics. “Cordelia the Crude” seems to meet McKay’s idea of aesthetics. I think McKay would appreciate Thurman’s authentic portrayal of a displaced Southern girl in Harlem who eventually becomes part of the seedy underbelly most everyone ignores. The vividness of Thurman’s account also highlights the authenticity McKay emphasizes. McKay eloquently states: “…[H]arlem did not hold quite the same thrill and glamor as before. Where formerly in saloons and cabarets and along the streets I received impressions like arrows piercing my nerves and distilled poetry from them, now I was often pointed out as an author. I lost the rare feeling of a vagabond feeding upon secret music singing in me” (McKay 161). The reflection on McKay’s part illuminates perhaps his own idea of the narrative voice, that vagabond translating the energies of a place in prose, poetry, or whatever medium the artist chooses.
McKay seems willing to suspend formal definitions often constructed by social forces to evaluate something objectively. His opinion of Walter White seems particularly useful for this. He writes that White “is Negroid simply because he closely identifies himself with the Negro group—just as a Teuton becomes a Moslem if he embraces Islam” (McKay 159). Based on this idea of associations McKay introduces, I wonder if any of this is applicable to forming a definition black art. Would McKay consider something patronized exclusively by white audiences still black if it is firmly associated with a white audience? This potential argument throws the career of someone like Archibald Motley Jr. under tight scrutiny because Motley found success largely with white audiences but yet his content was often portraying jazzy street scenes.
Entry two
From Black No More and “South Park”
The excerpt from Schuyler’s work probably ranks among the most favorite works I’ve read thus far from the course. When the original presentation on Schuyler happened, we talked about science fiction and that genre as a means of examining social constructions, the future, and other things. Yet the plot in Schuyler’s work seems like a useful comparison to the “South Park” episode where Kyle Broflovski undergoes a negroplasty to become black.
The brief excerpt from Schuyler’s work demonstrates the social-commercial ramifications of erasing skin color (and the social baggage that accompanies it). The various “race” leaders are exposed as commercial-minded men who built their comfortable life off a corrupt a system. Ultimately, Dr. Beard, Licorice Santop, Walter Williams, and a host of others, are rendered ludicrous because while they have eloquently stated the problem, racism, they have not really thought of the next step, overcoming racism. The excerpt’s focus on the healthy commercial structure thinking about the race problem has created neglects those black people who went through Dr. Crookman’s machine. Here is where the “South Park” episode enters into the picture.
Kyle Broflovski, a Jewish elementary school student, emerges as South Park’s premier basketball player and representative on the state of Colorado’s team. Kyle discovers the other team members are tall, athletic, but the thing he focuses on is that they are also all black. Kyle consults with a plastic surgeon, who then in turn makes Kyle black after darkening his skin, inserting genitalia into his knee caps to make him taller, and doing other things to re-arrange his face. Part of the episode’s point, I feel, is that outward appearances still do not account for social experiences that truly account for an authentic identity. Kyle preserves his curly red hair, a hallmark of his Jewish identity, and still talks the same—suggesting that little socially has changed for Kyle. While Kyle is black, he is still no better at basketball than when he was a small white kid. This idea makes Schuyler’s title, Black No More, particularly striking.
The idea of blackness rendered in the South Park episode suggests a physical and social identity. Yet for whatever reason, the two seem largely unrelated, perhaps because of the brevity of the time Kyle spent as a black kid. Some interesting questions to ask of Schuyler’s full work is how does the changing of skin color finally alter black’s social identity. The implication is that racism is destroyed, so that suggests blacks can appreciate the full opportunities afforded in the United States. So while the blacks in Schuyler’s work are physically black no more, they also appear to be socially “black” no more.
“The Harlem Intelligentsia” and “Cordelia the Crude” and “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” and the work of Archibald Motley Jr.
McKay’s chapter “The Harlem Intelligentsia” contains arguments for aesthetics and black art. McKay’s aesthetics emphasize authenticity, and that authenticity ought to be preserved, regardless the picture portrayed through the artist’s medium. McKay writes: “I think all people are interesting to write about. It depends on the writer’s ability to bring them out alive” (McKay 159). Within that statement appears some implication that links form and content. The writer’s ability is a very broad term that could encompass potentially much more besides form, but form is definitely under that very large, ambiguous umbrella.
Two selected works: “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” and “Cordelia the Crude” meet McKay’s idea of aesthetics in varying ways. The idea of form makes Nugent’s work, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade” a problematic piece for McKay’s aesthetics, I think. Nugent’s short story, while vividly capturing the dead-end artist lifestyle, seemingly obfuscates the vitality of the people in the story through its form. The ellipses disjoint the narrative, presenting the readers with flashes of information that can be very difficult to piece together. While the lighter in the story undoubtedly meets McKay’s insistence that words ought to be “pictures conveying color and meaning,” the rest of the short story presents challenges to McKay’s aesthetics. “Cordelia the Crude” seems to meet McKay’s idea of aesthetics. I think McKay would appreciate Thurman’s authentic portrayal of a displaced Southern girl in Harlem who eventually becomes part of the seedy underbelly most everyone ignores. The vividness of Thurman’s account also highlights the authenticity McKay emphasizes. McKay eloquently states: “…[H]arlem did not hold quite the same thrill and glamor as before. Where formerly in saloons and cabarets and along the streets I received impressions like arrows piercing my nerves and distilled poetry from them, now I was often pointed out as an author. I lost the rare feeling of a vagabond feeding upon secret music singing in me” (McKay 161). The reflection on McKay’s part illuminates perhaps his own idea of the narrative voice, that vagabond translating the energies of a place in prose, poetry, or whatever medium the artist chooses.
McKay seems willing to suspend formal definitions often constructed by social forces to evaluate something objectively. His opinion of Walter White seems particularly useful for this. He writes that White “is Negroid simply because he closely identifies himself with the Negro group—just as a Teuton becomes a Moslem if he embraces Islam” (McKay 159). Based on this idea of associations McKay introduces, I wonder if any of this is applicable to forming a definition black art. Would McKay consider something patronized exclusively by white audiences still black if it is firmly associated with a white audience? This potential argument throws the career of someone like Archibald Motley Jr. under tight scrutiny because Motley found success largely with white audiences but yet his content was often portraying jazzy street scenes.
Entry two
From Black No More and “South Park”
The excerpt from Schuyler’s work probably ranks among the most favorite works I’ve read thus far from the course. When the original presentation on Schuyler happened, we talked about science fiction and that genre as a means of examining social constructions, the future, and other things. Yet the plot in Schuyler’s work seems like a useful comparison to the “South Park” episode where Kyle Broflovski undergoes a negroplasty to become black.
The brief excerpt from Schuyler’s work demonstrates the social-commercial ramifications of erasing skin color (and the social baggage that accompanies it). The various “race” leaders are exposed as commercial-minded men who built their comfortable life off a corrupt a system. Ultimately, Dr. Beard, Licorice Santop, Walter Williams, and a host of others, are rendered ludicrous because while they have eloquently stated the problem, racism, they have not really thought of the next step, overcoming racism. The excerpt’s focus on the healthy commercial structure thinking about the race problem has created neglects those black people who went through Dr. Crookman’s machine. Here is where the “South Park” episode enters into the picture.
Kyle Broflovski, a Jewish elementary school student, emerges as South Park’s premier basketball player and representative on the state of Colorado’s team. Kyle discovers the other team members are tall, athletic, but the thing he focuses on is that they are also all black. Kyle consults with a plastic surgeon, who then in turn makes Kyle black after darkening his skin, inserting genitalia into his knee caps to make him taller, and doing other things to re-arrange his face. Part of the episode’s point, I feel, is that outward appearances still do not account for social experiences that truly account for an authentic identity. Kyle preserves his curly red hair, a hallmark of his Jewish identity, and still talks the same—suggesting that little socially has changed for Kyle. While Kyle is black, he is still no better at basketball than when he was a small white kid. This idea makes Schuyler’s title, Black No More, particularly striking.
The idea of blackness rendered in the South Park episode suggests a physical and social identity. Yet for whatever reason, the two seem largely unrelated, perhaps because of the brevity of the time Kyle spent as a black kid. Some interesting questions to ask of Schuyler’s full work is how does the changing of skin color finally alter black’s social identity. The implication is that racism is destroyed, so that suggests blacks can appreciate the full opportunities afforded in the United States. So while the blacks in Schuyler’s work are physically black no more, they also appear to be socially “black” no more.
Week 12, entry one and two
Entry one, “The Creation” by James Weldon Johnson and “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes
The two poems take differing approaches to attacking the narrative poor people are encouraged to cling to: theirs is the kingdom of Heaven and all the luxury promised in it. As we discussed in class, the Earth in “The Creation” offers comfort and splendor to be enjoyed by all. Yet the opening lines in Hughes’ poem challenge this rendering: “Well, son, I’ll tell you: / Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (261). The mother in Hughes’ poem navigates a life full of peril filled with tacks, splinters, and boards torn up (261). The beauty in Hughes’ poem is identified in the determination earthly actors demonstrate. The mother does not seem resigned to wait for the afterlife. Rather she has chosen an arduous path that promises struggle and hardship and a perpetual climb.
What strengthens the actors in these poems to move beyond the traditional narrative of the poor also differs. The mother seems motivated by improving the next generation’s stock. The ultimatum the mother delivers to her son is clear: “So boy, don’t you turn back… / Don’t you fall now-- / For I’se still goin’, honey, / I’se still climbin, / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (Hughes 262). The implication from the line resounds: the mother is willing to move beyond her own familial ties in pursuit of improvement for perhaps her entire race. In Johnson’s poem, God is cast as lonely. This loneliness makes God approachable, for He enjoys his creations. Throughout the empty world God creates, His oft-repeated line echoes: “That’s good!” (Johnson, 286). God’s creations seemingly have much meaning to Him, for they have inspired and cultivated His genius and creativity but perhaps most importantly, abated His loneliness. If His creations should falter, God could tumble back into loneliness and despair. The poem makes God approachable, a God that appreciates his creations and appears there for them throughout all their hardships because as God warded off loneliness and despair from his divine powers, so now he appears willing to ward off despair for his creations.
Entry two,
“Nothing Endures” by Countee Cullen and “I Want To Die While You Love Me” by Georgia Douglas Johnson
The two poems by the talented poets seem to capture Richard Wright’s creed that black art ought to be intended for black audiences, not necessarily appeals to white audiences. “I Want To Die While You Love Me” is a remarkably beautiful work that measures vitality through the experience of love and that experience over time. The times without love crawl at a snail’s pace, agonizing the speaker: “Oh, who would care to live / Till love has nothing more to ask / And nothing more to give!” (Johnson 275). Life after love has lost its energy and vitality seems worthless to the speaker because the times would just feel so slow and arguably make the speaker feel cold. While the time without love is agonizingly slow, the time with love seems all too quickly passing. The speaker has a nagging conscience reminding him or her love will dim, and this high will cease to be (Johnson 275).
Likewise “Nothing Endures” by Countee Cullen recognizes love as a fleeting quality that has the heart purring for its duration but ultimately all blood goes from riotous to “quiet” and “still” (Cullen 250-251). The poem concludes with the powerful observation: “Nirvana gapes / For all things given; / Nothing escapes, / Love not even” (Cullen 251).
Buried perhaps within the two poems is a social commentary on the factors that contribute to love. The speaker in Johnson’s poem identifies fairness, laughter upon his or her lips, and lights in his or her hair as factors holding his or her partner’s attention (275). Time slowly erodes are youthful attractiveness and mental sharpness in Johnson’s poem, making love’s timeline a situational rather than universal code. In “Nothing Endures” there is a “tax” levied “on the subtlest brain” that perhaps control the perception of beauty waxing or waning (Cullen 251). The two poems demonstrate that some Renaissance figures were not neglecting domestic and personal issues in search of the general racial uplift. This sentiment reverts back to Wright and other’s aesthetic value that black art should be for black audiences. At the same time these poems seem short of DuBois’ “criteria” for Negro art, for they do not seem to hold the political propaganda the race leader demanded out of works.
The two poems take differing approaches to attacking the narrative poor people are encouraged to cling to: theirs is the kingdom of Heaven and all the luxury promised in it. As we discussed in class, the Earth in “The Creation” offers comfort and splendor to be enjoyed by all. Yet the opening lines in Hughes’ poem challenge this rendering: “Well, son, I’ll tell you: / Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (261). The mother in Hughes’ poem navigates a life full of peril filled with tacks, splinters, and boards torn up (261). The beauty in Hughes’ poem is identified in the determination earthly actors demonstrate. The mother does not seem resigned to wait for the afterlife. Rather she has chosen an arduous path that promises struggle and hardship and a perpetual climb.
What strengthens the actors in these poems to move beyond the traditional narrative of the poor also differs. The mother seems motivated by improving the next generation’s stock. The ultimatum the mother delivers to her son is clear: “So boy, don’t you turn back… / Don’t you fall now-- / For I’se still goin’, honey, / I’se still climbin, / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (Hughes 262). The implication from the line resounds: the mother is willing to move beyond her own familial ties in pursuit of improvement for perhaps her entire race. In Johnson’s poem, God is cast as lonely. This loneliness makes God approachable, for He enjoys his creations. Throughout the empty world God creates, His oft-repeated line echoes: “That’s good!” (Johnson, 286). God’s creations seemingly have much meaning to Him, for they have inspired and cultivated His genius and creativity but perhaps most importantly, abated His loneliness. If His creations should falter, God could tumble back into loneliness and despair. The poem makes God approachable, a God that appreciates his creations and appears there for them throughout all their hardships because as God warded off loneliness and despair from his divine powers, so now he appears willing to ward off despair for his creations.
Entry two,
“Nothing Endures” by Countee Cullen and “I Want To Die While You Love Me” by Georgia Douglas Johnson
The two poems by the talented poets seem to capture Richard Wright’s creed that black art ought to be intended for black audiences, not necessarily appeals to white audiences. “I Want To Die While You Love Me” is a remarkably beautiful work that measures vitality through the experience of love and that experience over time. The times without love crawl at a snail’s pace, agonizing the speaker: “Oh, who would care to live / Till love has nothing more to ask / And nothing more to give!” (Johnson 275). Life after love has lost its energy and vitality seems worthless to the speaker because the times would just feel so slow and arguably make the speaker feel cold. While the time without love is agonizingly slow, the time with love seems all too quickly passing. The speaker has a nagging conscience reminding him or her love will dim, and this high will cease to be (Johnson 275).
Likewise “Nothing Endures” by Countee Cullen recognizes love as a fleeting quality that has the heart purring for its duration but ultimately all blood goes from riotous to “quiet” and “still” (Cullen 250-251). The poem concludes with the powerful observation: “Nirvana gapes / For all things given; / Nothing escapes, / Love not even” (Cullen 251).
Buried perhaps within the two poems is a social commentary on the factors that contribute to love. The speaker in Johnson’s poem identifies fairness, laughter upon his or her lips, and lights in his or her hair as factors holding his or her partner’s attention (275). Time slowly erodes are youthful attractiveness and mental sharpness in Johnson’s poem, making love’s timeline a situational rather than universal code. In “Nothing Endures” there is a “tax” levied “on the subtlest brain” that perhaps control the perception of beauty waxing or waning (Cullen 251). The two poems demonstrate that some Renaissance figures were not neglecting domestic and personal issues in search of the general racial uplift. This sentiment reverts back to Wright and other’s aesthetic value that black art should be for black audiences. At the same time these poems seem short of DuBois’ “criteria” for Negro art, for they do not seem to hold the political propaganda the race leader demanded out of works.
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